


Happy's Orders

by MissNightTigress



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, stony - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Spoilers, F/M, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 09:49:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16302875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissNightTigress/pseuds/MissNightTigress
Summary: Happy Hogan has some advice for his billionaire boss Toni Stark after a sour meeting with the Avengers who remain after the snap from the Infinity Gauntlet. The advice concerns a certain Captain America, who is still at odds with Toni. Will the scorned Iron Woman heed Happy’s advice, and take advantage of the opportunity presented to her?





	Happy's Orders

**Author's Note:**

> This is a part of a rather lengthy fic I'm working on between Toni and Steve, post Infinity War. Please let me know your thoughts, as it will actually help improve the bigger piece overall. Thank you!

“Having a meeting this soon after the culling was a fabulous idea, Toni,” the billionaire hissed at herself as she locked the door to her suite at the Avengers compound. “Yeah, because everyone was going to have a level head, right?”

“Things didn’t go so well, I take it?”

Happy’s voice startled her, causing her to jump a bit. She hadn’t been expecting him to be in her suite, or to have heard her complaining. “What gave it away, Captain Obvious?” she snarked, glaring across the room to where Happy had turned around in the chair he had been occupying. “No. Spangles and I were at each other’s throats before I adjourned it.”

“Again?” He folded up the paper he had been reading and rose to his feet to face her. “Y’know, nothing is going to get solved or move on until you two just kiss and make up already.”

Her face had already been heated from the argument with Steve in the meeting, but that idea of pressing her lips to the Captain’s made her blush further. She only hoped Happy couldn’t distinguish the difference. “Ah, yes. One heavy make-out session and boom! Everything will be hunky dory. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“It’s a figure of speech.” He cocked his head to the side. “What the hell even happened?”

Her shoulders rolled in a shrug, bunching up the sleeves of her wine-colored blouse along with them. “He doesn’t think I have my priorities straight, and he’s still angry at me over signing the damn Accords.”

There was a pause as Happy took what Toni said into consideration before he piped up, “You know, Toni, he’s wrong.”

Her chocolate eyes watched him warily. She knew a smart ass response was coming.

“Neither one of you have your priorities straight.”

And there it was. “Who’s side are you even on, Benedict Arnold?” she snarled.

“Haven’t I always been on yours, or at least most of the time? You both have your priorities misconstrued. You’re both trying to fix the house and lay brick without the mortar, the glue.”

He advanced over to where Toni was standing near the door as he prepared to leave. “He was your level head and you were his right hand. You two need to figure things out on how to become whole together again before starting on the path to fixing everything. You can’t always run before learning how to walk.”  
With that, he was out the door, leaving Toni with only her thoughts and an unlocked door.

* * *

Over the course of the next few days, Toni found ways to busy herself around her suite and the lab, shutting herself off from the rest of the group. After the argument with Steve and then the conversation with Happy, she felt it best to just keep to herself. Maybe that would give her a chance to reflect on things with the super soldier.

In a way, she was correct. Her mind kept drifting to the baby-blue-eyed blond. She thought about their initial introduction, how terse and abrasive they were to each other before they finally began to mesh after the death of Agent Coulson. Her recollection showed her the night Ultron broke out of the lab, the moments right before when the team had been drinking together and she and Steve were flashing flirty glances at each other. At least, Toni thought they were flirty. Then again, given her former playgirl title, she could have completely misread everything.

Even if she did misread everything, she was helpless as an attraction blossomed for Steve. He worried about everyone on the team, but paid special attention to her, something she wasn’t necessarily used to. He’d make sure her bruises were all tended to, that she ate after really rough missions. He put in a lot of effort to show he was there for her…

Until suddenly, he wasn’t.

That was why it was heart-wrenching when he chose Barnes over her, when they fought in that Siberian compound. It was like she didn’t even exist to him anymore. He elected not to tell her about her parents just to keep his old pal around. She could forgive him for not signing the Sokovia Accords. She even admitted that the document was a mistake, though her heart was initially in the right place. The abandonment and secret-keeping issues, however...those were going to be harder to forgive, even with his stupid letter.

Those memories played out in her brain every day, along with thinking about what Happy had told her. She and Steve were essentially the glue that held the team together. If they weren’t at odds, maybe they would have all been able to stop Thanos together.

Maybe then Pepper and that spider kid, Peter Parker, would have still been around.

It was late one night when Toni was having all these thoughts again, and they were just agitating the billionaire more. In an effort to distract herself, she figured it was time to finally bite the bullet and write the official public relations statement on the culling.

She sat cross-legged on her enormous king bed, laptop on her calves while three semi-transparent screens hovered in front of her face. One was for referencing previous press releases Pepper made, one was for accessing the Associated Press stylebook so little to no editing had to be done for the papers, and one was for news streams. As much as she didn’t want to relive the tragedy, the streams would help her think of material.  
She nearly detached herself from everything outside of her bedroom until a loud knocking was heard on the front door to her suite.

“Miss Stark, you have a visitor,” F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice trilled into her bedroom.

Toni snorted. “Thanks for the newsflash. Who is it?”

“It’s Captain Rogers requesting entrance, Miss.”

Toni’s heart did a massive flip in her body. “Steve? I’m surprised he’s even here.”

“I don’t see why, Miss. Captain Rogers has been on property since landing from Wakanda. In fact, several times this week surveillance has captured him pacing by your suite door.”

He stayed? That was rather shocking to the billionaire. She thought for sure after their argument he would have went all nomad again and disappeared into the night. Another thunderous rap on her door broke her from her thoughts. “And I thought I was impatient.”

“Shall I get the door, Miss?”

Long, caramel brown tendrils shuddered as Toni shook her head, slithering off her bed and padding across the room and into the hall. “I’ll welcome our guest, F.R.I.D.A.Y. Thank you.”

She reached the door in no time, her lithe fingers curling around the deadbolt before she glanced down at her wardrobe. Donning black sleeping shorts and her favorite AC/DC t-shirt, she wasn’t exactly dressed to impress. Oh well. Her suite, her rules.

Flicking the deadbolt, she yanked on the door handle to get the door open. Once she did, her breath caught in her throat.

There stood Steve, his blond locks looking disheveled, his eyes baggy. He wasn’t dressed to the nines either by any means, wearing loose gray sweatpants and a white t-shirt. But damn it if those baby blues weren’t still jaw-dropping and heart-stopping. His beard twitched ever so slightly in a sign of a slight smirk. “Hey there, Toni,” he drawled, voice low.

“Hey yourself,” she breathed.

Eyes locked on one another, neither one of them moved for a tense moment. It was Steve who broke it first, nodding his head toward the living room. “Can I, uh, come in?”

Toni shook her head to break herself from her thoughts before hurriedly opening the door wider to welcome him in. “Yeah, come on in. If we’re gonna argue, I rather it be behind closed doors anyway. Less embarrassing.”  
He sighed as he sauntered in, pacing around her large black sectional before taking a seat on the chaise lounge. “I didn’t come here to argue, Toni. Trust me.”

Closing and locking the door, she couldn’t help but snort in amusement. “That’s kind of hard to do, all things considered.”

The super soldier sighed in irritation, but he chose to ignore her little quip. His eyes locked on her again before he chuckled. “You know, you can come in. This is your suite after all.”

She was being a rude host, it was true. Her bare feet padded across the light silver carpet to the white chair beside the sectional, where she sat at the very edge. “I’m surprised you’re even here, Capsicle. I was certain after the meeting a few days ago you were going to vanish again.”

His brow furrowed. “Do you really think me a lesser man? You think I just run away from my problems?”

A scoff ripped from her throat. “Is that what I am, Steve? A problem?”

“Right now, you sure as hell aren’t being a solution. I can sure tell you that.”

There was a terse moment of silence between them as they glared at each other. Toni really caught a look at Steve’s face. The word “exhausted” didn’t even seem to cover it.

“You haven’t been sleeping, have you?”

“You haven’t either.” He leaned back, calloused hand reaching around to rub his neck. “It’s difficult to think about sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I lose all of them again. I see Vision, Wanda, T’challa…”

“Barnes.”

His gaze shifted back to her as his best friend’s name fell like acid from her lips. Apparently, she wasn’t done arguing just yet. He braced himself for whatever verbal lashing she had in store for him.

None came. Instead, her palms rubbed together as she fidgeted in her seat. “I know what you mean,” she muttered, voice barely above a whisper, “I saw quite a few people disappear myself. Hell...I even lost the kid.” Just thinking about Peter made her swallow thickly.

She could feel Steve watching her, waiting for her to explode, either into tears or a ball of rage. Instead, she rose to her feet and began pacing in front of him. “I don’t...I don’t really want to think about it. Yet it’s all I’ve been thinking about all night, trying to write this stupid press release. I just...I want to find a way to reverse it, to bring them all back or just find that bastard and blow his brains out, something!”

Steve sighed from the chaise lounge before pushing himself to his feet, closing a bit of the distance between him and the Iron Woman. “Toni.”

The way he said her name made her attention snap to him.

“The only way we are going to fix this, or move on from it...is if we fix this.” A finger gestured between them. “Us.”

She snorted in response. “How can we fix this, Steve? Huh? Do you know?”

“If this is about the Accords-”

“Fuck the Accords!” she seethed. “I made a mistake with those fucking things and I’ve already admitted it. No. This isn’t about the Accords. This is about the other choices you made, specifically the choices you made with Barnes.”

He rolled his eyes. “Jesus, are we not past that already? I said I was sorry, Toni!” He watched as her chest heaved in anger, and he lowered his voice to try to get her to calm down as well. “I’m sorry. I just...I didn’t want to lose my best friend again.”

Her arms snaked over her chest. “Your best friend? You’re so stupidly loyal, Steve, it’s not even funny.”

“Hey, I am loyal,” he growled, “I came when you called, after all. And you were nowhere to be found. You weren’t on the battlefield at Wakanda.”

She braced herself for a lashing, a questioning of where her loyalty was since she hadn’t be there. Instead of harshness and abrasiveness, Steve’s features softened. One of his massive hands came out and brushed against her elbow gingerly, coaxing her to stand down. Her arms fell to her side.

“You weren’t there,” he reiterated, “And I was terrified, Toni. That was the last communication I had from you and you weren’t there when I saw everyone else disappear. I assumed the worst. I assumed that I lost you again, in a way that hurt worse than losing you over Bucky.”

She blinked in confusion. What was he saying, that he thought she was already dead and mourned? “What?”

His hand slid into her right, his other hand taking her left. His body was hot, on fire it felt like to her. Maybe that was just her, and the arguing made her hands clammy. She couldn’t tell. “It wasn’t easy to hurt you. I knew I would lose you, and I’ve ached over that choice every day. Bucky even gave me hell over it.”

Was that supposed to clear everything up? She was just even more confused. She kept her mouth shut, hoping he would elaborate more.

“I didn’t want to lose my best friend. I was too busy thinking about my past and my connections. Losing Peggy kind of put me in that mindset. It took Bucky to show me that I lost a possible future. And then when I didn’t see you at the battlefield, I thought that possible future was absolutely gone for good.”

She leaned up on her tiptoes so that she was nearly eye-level with the Captain, squinting into his eyes. “Are you drunk, Steve? Because you sure as hell sound like one. You’re all over the place tonight, man. A possible future? How? We were never an item.”

His shoulders slumped. “I’m sleep-deprived, Toni. Gimme a break.” He cocked his head to the side and gave her a sad smile. “And...just because we weren’t an item at the time doesn’t mean I’ve never entertained the idea of being one.”

“What?” She felt like a parrot at this point, repeating the same question. She cleared her throat, trying to find her words. “Okay, wait a minute here. You were literally just jumping down my fucking throat, and now you’re telling me you’ve ‘entertained the idea’ of being with me?”

“Ugh!” he roared in frustration, stepping away from the billionaire. “Why is everything so complicated with you?” He ran his hands through his hair, eyes locking with hers. “I’m trying to fix this because I just...I can’t do this anymore, Toni. Not with you.”

She rocked back on her heels, lips pursed as she considered what he said. “Y’know…” she drawled, “If Rhodey or Pepper were in Barnes’ position and I were in yours...I probably would have made the same call. I can understand why you did.”

A look of relief flashed across the super soldier’s features momentarily.

“I’ve entertained being an item as well, Steve,” she mumbled, chewing on her lower lip. “When my parents died, specifically my mother...I felt abandoned. Yeah, sure, other people took care of me most of my life, but my parents were still there, even if my father wasn’t Father of the Year material.”

Steve got to say his peace, so he just nodded in response as Toni spoke hers.

“I learned how to handle it. I buried myself in M.I.T, lab work, trying to carry on Dad’s legacy. In a way, it made me who I am today. It made me Iron Woman. I turned out okay with that situation, and I’ve rather kept myself guarded to make sure that didn’t happen again. Then a certain baby-blue-eyed captain made an appearance into my life, and that all went to shit.”

His brows shot up in response, but he remained silent.

She swallowed hard before speaking again. “I let my guard down, let you in. Maybe it’s my fault for not acting first. Maybe not. But when you chose Barnes over me...chose my parents’ killer over me...I felt abandoned all over again.”

“Toni…”

Tears were stinging her eyes, ones she had been holding back for years, and they were threatening to spill over. “Maybe...maybe I should thank Barnes, if we are able to reverse this. Either that, or punch him in his stupid ass face. If he hadn’t been brainwashed, I wouldn’t have become Iron Woman and chances are, I wouldn’t have met you.”

Steve took a giant step toward Toni and closed the gap, hands coming up and cupping her cheeks, brushing underneath her eyes to catch the tears. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I should’ve told you. I was a man out of time trying to relive the glory days, and I didn’t see what was right in front of me.”

Toni merely sniffled in response.

“We have a chance to fix this now. I have a second chance to make things right. I want that chance, Toni.”

She clicked her tongue, trying not to get swept off her feet, keeping her guard up. “If Barnes were here-”

“No. No. Don’t you do that. Don’t think about what might be if things were different. That’s not fair.” His forehead pressed against hers. “We have a second chance here, Toni. Please.”

Her knees were buckling, her reserve fading. She wanted to be angry. She wanted to be furious, to push him away because he betrayed her, abandoned her. The harsh reality of it was, though, she would have made the same calls. He was right; they had this second chance in front of them, and if she didn’t take it, she would end up kicking herself later on.

She blinked away the tears, eyes focused on Steve’s in front of her. Her delicate fingers reached up and framed his face, bringing him closer. She hesitated a moment, though, second guessing if she wanted to take the chance.

The decision was made for her, though, when Steve’s lips pressed against hers gingerly. When he pulled away to study her, she closed the distance and kissed him again with more ferocity, more hunger. Steve never faltered, never pulled away. Rather, his muscular arms slithered down to her waist and tugged her in a tight embrace.

When they finally broke apart to catch their breath, Toni chuckled softly. “F.R.I.D.A.Y., advise all visitors tonight and into tomorrow morning that I am not to be disturbed.”

“Any particular reason, Miss Stark?”

“I’m following Happy’s orders.”


End file.
